There are probably very few, if any, chief financial officers of South Africa’s top companies who have ever had to go to bed hungry. Aarti Takoordeen may be the CFO of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) today, but she still has vivid memories of the hunger she experienced growing up in Ladysmith in a family of four with a single parent.
At 32, Aarti was the youngest appointed CFO of a main board JSE listed entity in 2013. The JSE is a securities exchange that provides a primary market, secondary market and post-trade services, market data and technology services. the JSE also regulates markets. A year later she was recognised by CFO South Africa as the Young CFO of the Year.
Aarti’s mother worked as an office receptionist at Chisa Welding in Ladysmith and struggled to make ends meet on her modest salary. Whilst she and her siblings grew up in a loving home, there were days when there wasn’t enough food for all of them and Aarti knew her mother would never be able to afford to send her to university.
Aarti was a good student and got her matric at the age of seventeen in 1997 from Windsor Secondary School in Ladysmith. She was unsure about what career she should pursue. Her mother asked her to consider joining this team of people in suits she would see showing up once a year at Chisa speaking flowery English and commanding the respect of all the workers on the premises. The description was sufficient to convince Aarti to apply for an article contract at Reyneke & Erasmus auditors in town. They were mightily impressed with her matric results and convinced that she would be able to pursue a degree and complete a training contract at the same time.
Motivated to lift herself and her family out of poverty, Aarti enrolled for accounting studies at UNISA in 1998. She graduated with a Bachelor of Accounting Science degree in 2002 and completed her honours in the same discipline a year later. She wrote the board examinations and qualified as a chartered accountant in 2004.
Aarti joined Hewlett Packard’s Johannesburg office in October 2004 as Head of Commercial Finance where she ‘put her hand up for everything over and above her day job’. Her role involved partnering with the business to ensure that the capital strategies were operationally supported and strategically focused to secure return on investment. She was responsible for representing financial results correctly and drawing insights from financial data to drive such initiatives as mergers and acquisitions.
Since her job entailed much more than just traditional accounting and finance and exposed her to the commercial aspects of an IT services group, she found it very fulfilling. It was just the right training ground for her next role as Group Financial Director of Johnson Controls for Middle East and Africa, which she took up in 2009.
The job at Johnson Controls was challenging and demanding but as a multinational corporation, she had little input in the strategic direction of the company as this was determined at the international head office. Aarti was in line to become Managing Director, but the prestigious title did not excite her because she had the nagging desire to be somewhere where she could feel that she was making a contribution.
After a while, she began considering other local opportunities. So, when then JSE CEO Nicky Newton-King approached her in 2013 about taking up the CFO position at the institution, she did not think twice before accepting the offer.
In 2017, she was selected by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to join a five-year programme for Young Global Leaders, which is aimed at bringing together individuals under the age of 40 who are tackling some of the world’s most complex challenges using innovative solutions. Her participation in this programme, as well as the transformation she has taken part in spearheading at the JSE, count under Aarti’s career highlights. When she joined the JSE, the leadership of the exchange was predominantly white and male. Today, three-quarters of the top management comprises women and the rest of organisation is much more diverse.
Another recent highlight for Aarti was completing a three-month Executive Education programme through Harvard Business School early this year. ‘They had to run the programme online because of the pandemic but this turned out to be an advantage because some of the speakers who would ordinarily not have made it to the Harvard campus managed to speak to us virtually. I highly recommend the course because the content is first-class in terms of teaching strategy, leadership and innovation,’ Aarti explains.
What has also that stood out for Aarti on the programme, is how each different faculty member and invited speaker emphasised a focus on people. ‘In order to be successful, everything we do needs to be people-centred and people-driven.’
In May 2022, Aarti left the JSE to take up the role of CFO of listed group AECI.
This article is an extract from the Masters of Money book by KC Rottok Chesaina (JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS)
